If you ever wanted to know why some people - including myself - have such a negative opinion of Samsung devices, consider the following. Let's take the latest CyanogenMod ROM for, say, my Find 51, and add the latest Google Apps package, and it totals at about 300 MB. That's the complete, fully functional Android operating system with all the Google applications and services.

I have nothing relevant to add to this, but I will say that after a year or so with my Google Nexus 4, my next phone will most certainly have an SDHC (or SDXC) slot. I've found enough things I want to do with a smart phone that do not fit comfortably in 16 GB (or even 32 GB) and I do not want to be locked down any more with a fixed amount of space.

Nexus 4, all you need is an OTG USB and un unlocked/rooted phone. The software to mount the drive is pretty much free. You can use any USB mass storage device then, including an SD adapter. However, I'd only really ever use that for media as it isn't safe for apps IMO.

...after a year or so with my Google Nexus 4, my next phone will most certainly have an SDHC (or SDXC) slot. I've found enough things I want to do with a smart phone that do not fit comfortably in 16 GB (or even 32 GB) and I do not want to be locked down any more with a fixed amount of space.

I've not found that storage is a problem with my 64GB iPhone 5S. I've got over 300 apps on it and about 320 full albums, most encoded in VBR MP3 at the highest quality settings.

The fewer connectors on a mobile phone, the happier I am. Connectors are frequent failure points and places for FOD intrusion.

Just a quick thing to note: that 8GB includes the size of the /cache partition which is usually empty, but needs to be able to hold a zip'd copy of the full ROM for OTAs. The actual size of the ROM is the amount of used space on /system. On the Galaxy S4, the /cache partition was 2GB and the /system partition was 2.7GB. For the S5, I'm guessing it's a 3GB/5GB split or something like that.

That's not to say TouchWiz isn't ridiculously huge, but it's not 8GB huge.

Source: myself (I wrote and maintain the dual boot project for the SGS4 )

Sounds reasonable, as i am seeing something similar on a Huawei Ascend P6.

8GB total internal, only 4GB available for user files. Best i can tell, they have split the rest into equal sized partitions that gets used during update. Possibly so that of a update goes bad, it can always fall back to the last working firmware.

Then again, internal user files storage is a kludge. It pretty much hijacks the (physically) external storage support of Android, and redirects it to a partition of the internal eMMC (or since 4.1, optionally a FUSE mount overlaying a directory on the system partition).

And Google seems reluctant to properly deal with this kludge. Their latest effort in Android storage management, Storage Access Framework, do not provide any way for apps to gain write access to physically external media (SD cards, USB drives via OTG and so on). If you want to put any files there, you need to plug it into a desktop or laptop...

Possibly so that of a update goes bad, it can always fall back to the last working firmware.

Pretty much. That and obviously it needs to be able to download the whole update before it can apply it, and it needs somewhere to store it while it downloads it.

Then again, internal user files storage is a kludge. It pretty much hijacks the (physically) external storage support of Android, and redirects it to a partition of the internal eMMC (or since 4.1, optionally a FUSE mount overlaying a directory on the system partition).

Ah now this, this is a reason to be annoyed. I have an old HTC Desire HD (personal 'phone) and a SGS4 (work 'phone). The HTC, I can just plug in and it appears as a USB Mass Storage device. Easy peasy. The SGS4...ah, well, MTP 'gov. Can't show the whole filesystem, more than my jobs worth init? Oh yeah, the slow transfers? That's a feature that is. Can't do anything about that, know what I mean?

Access to storage on Android 'phones has been steadily going backwards for years, basically.

Best i can tell, the designers are in charge. And hell bent on "idiotproofing" everything.

One response i have seen to the change to MTP is that it allows file transfers without dismounting the partition internally.

This because various people were supposedly annoyed that the music player crashed when the usb cable was plugged in.

The simple reason for that? the partition that the music files was stored on had to be dismounted so that it could be accessed by the computer via UMS (the USB protocol used for external HDDs and thumb drives).

Can't comment on 1.x, but i don't recall having any issues setting it up on 2.x. But then the issue may as well have been political, as i recall there being a whole lot of hand-wringing about the issue from USA thanks to carrier meddling.

The HTC, I can just plug in and it appears as a USB Mass Storage device. Easy peasy. The SGS4...ah, well, MTP 'gov.

To be fair, the USB mass storage option was abandoned in 4.x when Google decided to unify the space for user files (aka "internal SD") with the space intended for apps. It's all MTP now, try to find the USB mass storage option on a Nexus 5 if you don't believe me. It's not just a Samsung thing.

Stupid me, I allowed my AT&T galaxy s4 business phone to update from an open firmware to one with a totally locked down bootloader. At least I was able to use something called 'safestrap' to get a system with every single piece of AT&T bloatware removed and almost all the samsung garbage gone as well, when I finally had enough of the builtin garbage.

The answer in the US is: buy a phone you can't lose control over and gut the power of the cell phone providers (AT&T and Verizon are both bad guys for locking their phones in this case).

The answer in the US is: buy a phone you can't lose control over and gut the power of the cell phone providers (AT&T and Verizon are both bad guys for locking their phones in this case).

Which pretty much limits you to a Nexus phone, and maybe a couple of others that you have to pay $600+ for. Better to find a way to unlock the bootloaders

And the #1 reason why Thom and people like him don't like Samsung phones is because of the plastic, whether they choose to admit it or not. Personally? I wish the ROMs were a little smaller, but I like some of the xtras that Touchwiz provides that is hard to replicate elsewhere, esp the s-pen and multi-window capabilities on my Note tablet.

Agreed. Recently I purchased the 16 gigs, dual SIM with colorful cases version for myself because my old LG L5 was getting long in the tooth and the MotoG specs sounded good enough for the price tag.

I was actually looking for a Nexus4 that was approaching affordable prices here in Brazil after the Nexus5 came out but that was already a stretch for me specially after the price hikes during Xmas seasons. I really needed the dual SIM card support and I live constantly on a budget so the MotoG was really a no-brainer but I went in thinking that it would be yet another laggy and lacking phone. I have never been so glad to be WRONG!

The Moto G is a good performer and it came with Jelly Bean off the shelf - which was fine as I wasn't really missing much - but has already been updated to the latest KitKat and the performance improvements are noticeable. For the first time in my life I truly couldn't be happier with a cell phone.

And I heard that it is making waves here in Latin America probably due to the price tag. Motorola really knocked it out of the park with the G and the X series.

Everything Samsung I've owned (except for a washing machine) over the last decade has died on me, usually just a month or two after the 1 year warranty expired. Engineering stuff to die after a certain time could be seen as pretty savvy, but it's still unscrupulous. The warranty claims department (at least in my part of the world) is hell to work with. Oh, and K-Pop is annoying as f*ck, and since Samsung runs Korea, it's their fault.

Actually the difference is closer to Haiku vs Windows, based on the scale. Haiku takes up less than 400MB on a fresh install, Windows 7 is well over 8GB.

Of course, then you get into apples and oranges, because the features of each of those OSes aren't comparable. Haiku is still a hobby OS at this stage, and can barely be used for daily work.

You could maybe say Windows 98 takes up 600MB of space installed vs Windows 7, but then you have a horribly outdated, buggy, and useless OS compared to its modern, powerful, and productive successor.

Honestly, there is no computer to phone analogy that works, since Cyanogenmod provides a fully functioning, highly useful OS, just as Samsung's stock ROM does. Even if you load up enough apps and widgets into Cyanogenmod to equal the form and function of the standard Samsung ROM, you still are barely reaching the 1GB mark, if at all.

Simply put, Samsung's offering is pure bloatware. That doesn't bother some people, and for those it does bother, there is Cyanogenmod. Everyone can be happy!

Let's see, "16GB" is 14.9GB of actual space, let's set apart 2GB for caches and stuff, minus the 7.9GB that are free, so that makes us about 5GB of code.

When I hear about code that has a size of 5GB, my mind boggles (I am talking about pure code here, not games where game assets take the bulk of space). Can you imagine how long the source code for that code would be?

On a second thought, a large portion of that code can be multiple copies of the same code and unused assets (icons etc).

Bad news either way.

PS: Samsung phones measure storage and free space as decimal, so if you see "16GB" of storage in your Samsung phone, don't get too exited. It's really 14.9GB. And the free space you see is actually less.